An image of a customer using a self service tool

What Is Self-Service Software?

Posted on 4 September 2020 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

Self-service technologies include a number of forms, such as:

A help section on your website
An interactive knowledge base
A chatbot

Optimised for convenience and usability, these tools allow customers to find the answers to their own questions, quickly and with ease.

Unlike other contact channels that involve customers liaising with support agents, such as live chat , email or phone, self-service software provides the support that customers, who want to be proactive require to resolve their own queries.

Customers engage with self-service software when they would like to find out more information, answer a query of troubleshoot an issue. This will generally relate to a product, service or the company itself. The software is built upon AI using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) principles to understand naturally phrased questions and have the ability to match relevant questions with answers.

An intelligent Knowledge base

Self-service software connects to a customer-friendly version of a wider knowledge base to deliver customers accurate and consistent information on every occasion. A knowledge base contains thousands of articles that include everything from company return policies to opening hours, troubleshooting videos to terms and conditions – sophisticated technology serves customer relevant results based on what is typed into the self-service search bar.

Not only is web self-service a key tool for facilitating good customer service, but it is an imperative part of the wider customer journey. If a customer has a question or issue that needs solving, it is likely that they will self-serve before ascending to other forms of contact. In fact a study by Microsoft revealed that 66% of customer will engage with self-service first rather than immediately talking with an agent.

Why Is Self-Service Software So Important Today?

The customer self-service software market is estimated to grow from USD 4.33 Billion in 2016 to USD 9.38 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.7% during the forecast period.

Self-Service Is the Key to Efficient Customer Service Operations

Growing contact volumes are a huge challenge for customer service and contact centre teams. Increasing support queries are putting a huge strain on support teams and agents unnecessarily, flooded with routine questions, they cannot focus their full attention on complex customer queries. This in turn can affect resolution times and quality, causing them to drop and customer satisfaction to suffer.

The reason that self-service software is currently so valuable to customer service teams is that is mitigates contact significantly. It can automate the entire question and answer process for a huge segment of customers, allowing agents to sufficiently deal with those in need.

Read: The Top 5 Benefits Of A Self-Service Contact Centre

Changing Customer Needs and Expectations

Customers’ needs and the way in which they engage with customer service is frequently changing, it’s one of the reasons why so many companies incorporate self-service options into their customer service offering; to build adaptation into their customer service front-lines.

It is becoming increasingly common for customers to consult a search engine or website for answers before reaching out to a support agent. In fact, a study by Synthetix revealed that 90% of consumers will always check a website before e-mailing or calling a company to find information.

Customers want the freedom to serve themselves and find out information on their own terms. There is a reason that self-service has been normalised for simple day-to-day operations such as paying for shopping, checking in for a flight and even self-ordering in restaurants. It has become many customers’ preference, and the same applies to online customer service. So much so that more than 90% of consumers expect organisations to have an online customer self-service offering. To ensure customers remain satisfied, companies must react to their needs and offer web self-service options.

We live in an increasingly fast paced world. As humans we are doing more at a quicker rate – customers are interacting with brands more, purchasing more, returning items more and subsequently, expecting more. A pwc study revealed that speed and convenience mattered most to customers, each hitting over 70% in importance when it came to experience. Fast solutions have become an everyday expectation for customers, which is why self-service software, that is easy to use, provides answers instantaneously and is available 24/7 is in such high demand.

Millennials and Gen Z prefer Self-service

Millennials (born between 1980 – 1995) and Gen Z (born between 1996 – 2012) now make up over 60% of the worldwide population. Having grown up in the digital age with smartphones, e-commerce and broadband, the internet is a comfortable place for them – and this applies to their customer service habits. Millennials and Gen Z would prefer to help themselves than engage with a support agent. A recent study revealed that 75% of millennials would rather use self-service and avoid picking up the phone.

Millennials and Gen Z, who constitute a significant portion of your customer base are self-reliant, expect things ‘on-demand’ and like to answer their own questions – it even makes them “feel good” when they can solve a problem solo. This generation has particularly high expectations when it comes to customer service – they want convenience, flexibility and instant answers – but most importantly, they are the future and companies should be catering to their preferences.

Shift in Digitisation

By 2023, more than 60% of all customer service engagements will be delivered via digital and web self-serve channels, up from 23% in 2019.

There has been a steady shift in digital transformation over the last decade, making online versions of shopping, banking and even counselling available and convenient for anyone to use. But are we moving towards a time where everything will be digitised?

External challenges like the shift in digitisation along with additional pressures such as those related to the COVID-19 crisis are causing customers to visit brick and mortar establishment less and less. The impact of which means consumers turn to digital substitutes for their needs, including costumer service. Consumers no longer visit physical businesses to solve problems, seek help or complain, just like their business transactions, they do it online. This is why self-service is effective, it simplifies things for the customer, but also alleviates the pressure put on support teams who are feeling the burden of a recent upward trend in online support requests.

What Are the Benefits of Using Self-Service Software?

Improved CSAT

A study by Microsoft revealed that 95% of respondents cited customer service as important in their choice of loyalty to brand, with 61% having switched brands due to poor customer service.

All too often customers are unnecessarily kept waiting in line for long periods of time to speak to support agents, subsequently causing frustration. This can easily be avoided using a self-service offering. Not every customer who is on hold needs to be there – which is why it’s vital that a ‘do it yourself’ option is available and accessible to avoid not only disgruntled customers, but strain on customer service.

Serving customers quick, accurate answers using a easy to navigate solution, can help build a lasting relationship between you and your customers and as a result, positively impacts your CSAT scores.

Reduced Operational Costs

Supermarkets that utilise self-service checkouts save operational costs by requiring fewer employees to oversee and assist customers – and the same applies to online customer service.

Self-service software helps to automate routine queries and by doing so the volume of support tickets, phone calls, emails and live chats are considerably reduced. This means employees spend less time dealing with routine questions and therefore the backlog is reduced, cutting operational and staffing costs significantly.

It can also impact operational efficiency positively, for example by reducing Average Handling Times (AHT). Because self-service is designed to deal with routine queries, time that agents would have otherwise spent answering high volumes of FAQs is significantly reduced. Self-service ultimately allows customer service to offload an entire category of enquiries, giving them greater capacity to dedicate more time to solving complex customer issues.

Consistent Answers

The beauty of self-service software is that it connects to the same library of knowledge that the entire customer service team consults when dealing with customers. The results that are served to the customer are pulled from your company knowledge base using sophisticated algorithms and AI.

This ensures that all answers that are delivered to your customers are consistent with the company and accurate. Companies that do not utilise the same source of knowledge across teams and contact channels risk providing inconsistent or inaccurate answers that could significantly harm their company and reputation.

Human-like Understanding

Self-service software utilises AI-powered Machine Learning (ML) so that it can learn from every customer interaction. This helps identify any errors, learn terminology and grammar and also serve the most popular answers in order to optimise customer experience.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is also used to help self-service software understand exactly what the customer is asking, using algorithms, it takes into consideration the keywords, intent, grammar and popularity of the question. This way the software can correctly respond to customers’ naturally phrased question, similar to how a human would.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Online customer experience has never been more important, with expectations higher than ever, customers want a smooth journey to their resolution, without roadblocks that create frustration.

With two thirds of customers preferring to first try solving their issue on their own, it is important that companies provide self-service software that supports this. It is equally important that self-service software offers escalation points, such as live chat to put customers in touch with an agent who can help with complex issues that cannot be solved using self-service – all of this contributes to an positive customer experience and therefore satisfied customers.

Empowered Employees

Self-service software proves not only advantageous for customers, but for employees too.

Because self-service software effectively automates questions and answers, employees who would otherwise be dealing with repetitive, mundane routine queries can now focus on helping customers with complicated issues. This not only relieves pressure on employees who were before flooded with routine qyestions, but it contributes to their sense of purpose, empowering them, which in turn can improve staff attrition rates.

Implementing Effective Self-service Software

When implemented correctly, self-service software benefits your company, employees and customers greatly. But there are challenges surrounding this tool, including:

Visibility – can your customers find it?

Functionality – does it work as intended?

Content – is there adequate knowledge available? A recent study revealed that 43% of respondents believed there was not enough information available through self-service

Ascension – if a customer’s query cannot be solved, is there an alternative channel offered?

Good self-service software can deflect customer contact by up to 50% (Synthetix research), improve customer satisfaction, enhance customer experience and make businesses more efficient overall. Here’s what to look out for effective implementation:

For tips on getting self-service implementation right, Check out this article

Low/No-Code Implementation

When looking at self-service software, it is important to choose your vendor carefully. Integration of these tools into your website can either be simple, installing 1 line of code, or a costly process involving many development hours. Make sure that you work with a vendor with a no-code philosophy, where all of the development work for the look, feel, design and operation of the tool is handled on the vendor’s end, requiring zero ongoing development work.

Streamlined Integrations With 3rd Party Systems

Choosing self-service software that can easily integrate with existing workflows and processes is crucial – the more platforms that can communicate with one another the greater access you have to better decision making and efficiency.

Effective self-service software is built on open RESTful APIs to ensure seamless integration with other existing tools such as a company knowledge base , other customer-facing applications such as live chat or 3rd parties including CRM and email integrations.

Allowing such connectivity can save time and resources and give your company a ‘360 degree’ view of your customer base, encouraging better service.

Escalation

Good self-service software should not only facilitate customer service, but the overall customer journey, start to finish.

It is important for self-service tools to include pre-configured escalation points to promote a smooth and successful experience. Escalation points offer a means to transfer the customer to an agent who can offer additional support and by doing so increase positive CSAT scores. If the self-service tool cannot find an adequate match for the question that is being asked, an escalation option can be included, transferring the customer on to an agent assisted channel such as live chat.

Using trigger management, Knowledge Managers can also configure escalation points based on the keywords that customers use. Keywords such as “cancel” or “renew” involve revenue and warrant agent attention opposed to a self-service response and can therefore be set up to introduce an escalation point. This gives customer service teams greater control over customer churn and upselling opportunities, contributing to revenue over time.

Reporting and Analytics

It is fundamental that self-service software includes comprehensive reporting and analytical tools. Companies can frequently improve the content and the way in which self-service software engages with customers thanks to its reporting features.

Not only can you identify your most popular questions, any errors or gaps from the analytical reports, but customer feedback can explicitly tell you how to improve. The “Did you find this article useful?” prompt can tell you a lot about your content and how effective it is – or isn’t in some cases.

Because customer needs and behaviour are constantly changing, self-service reporting is key in ensuring you are keeping up with any major trends.

If companies want to retain customers by offering them great a customer service experience, whilst benefitting from a multitude of operational wins, they should have a range of customer service offerings in place, including self-service technologies.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to know more about self-service software or require help implementing self-service software, please

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Preparing customer service for retail’s first Covid Christmas

Posted on 28 July 2020 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

Preparing customer service for retail’s first Covid Christmas

Christmas 2020 will be the first ‘Golden Quarter’ during Covid, presenting challenges to retailers unmatched by any other season in living memory.

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Already during this pandemic, retailers have seen a 20% increase in customer service enquiries, compared to the same period last year, as customers are shifting to online support channels. This increased operational cost over Christmas would prove fatal to many companies, causing them to abandon customer queries, tickets and complaints, as the cost to handle them would simply be too high. While we cannot avoid these approaching challenges, we can mitigate against the effects and financial burdens by planning now; adapting how our teams operate, the tools we use and the channels in which we engage with our customers.

Challenge: A massive increase to customer service costs over Christmas

Customer behaviour in summer is an early indication of customer behaviour during the festive season. While the future is an unknown, retailers should expect unprecedented levels of calls and emails, live chats and FAQ tool usage this Christmas. Normally, companies would handle the increased number of phone calls and emails by temporarily increasing headcount, bloating contact centre costs and decreasing efficiency during peak seasons. The web solution many retailers have in place to aid this problem is a basic but unscalable help section of their website, normally taking the form of a static FAQ page. These are often maintained by an external agency and normally see infrequent use. As query volume and complexity increases, these systems do not scale to meet the demand; queries are unanswered and customer end up in an increasingly lengthy queue to talk to an agent. When stress tested by a Covid Christmas, this will likely result in record breaking levels of contact centre costs, as well as risking CSAT health in the long term.

Solution: Proactive Self-service software, reducing overall contact by up to 25%

Online Self-service tools automate routine query handling, delivering high-end service 24/7. Retailers typically see overall reductions in customer queries in their call centre of 18% to 25% with a web based Self-service solution implemented on their website. When customers land on your website to find your phone number, intercept them with a proactive AI-powered Chatbot or an Intelligent Knowledge Base. These solutions are built on conversational AI, designed so the customer can engage with them as they would a human agent. Using natural language processing (NLP), these tools identify intent and recognise when a human is needed, escalating automatically to an agent assisted channel, such as Live Chat. For the average customer, this means only one explanation of their issue with one clear result. For the company, this automates a huge percentage of their contact centre workload, freeing agents to handle the more complex queries while keeping overhead costs low.

Challenge: Customers are moving online, reducing upsell and ‘customer delight’ opportunities

With the Government advising people to limit their contact with others and maintain social distancing when outside, retails are turning to online innovations to create a ‘Covid-secure’ environment. This will limit the number of future physical locations and accelerate the move towards online commerce. As customers typically prefer to enquire via the same channel from which they’re purchasing, this will drive a significant percentage of overall customer contacts to online channels, from simple queries to complex complaints.

Solution: Drive up average order values and CSAT scores by personally engaging online.

The importance of proactive customer engagement across your web channels should be your digital team’s main focus. Use Self-service tools that can intelligently review your customer’s intent, actively shifting them to live agents when configurable conditions are met. This can be the digital equivalent of a helpful shop assistant directing a customer to find a range of products they did not know about, or a direct line to an expert if the customer is experiencing a non-standard query.

Challenge: Customer service queries are more complex and unmanageable

A recent study by Harvard Business Review found that during the pandemic, the average company is seeing customer service calls scored as ‘difficult’ twice as much as normal, rising from 10% to 20%. Before Covid, most customer service questions related to simple matters such as a returns policy or opening hours, now there is a wide set of complex issues that Covid has caused. There has been a huge increase in customer queries related to topics that rarely are updated, to name a few:

Health & safety during deliveries;
Vulnerable shopper policies;
Hygienic returns;
Changing rooms;

Additionally, the ‘correct answer’ often changes weekly to align with government updates. As such, simple FAQ sections on websites find themselves out of date within days of being updated and lack the depth of information crucial to Covid related issues. Managing this manually is not scalable and logistically unmanageable – if an update is required, this is typically communicated to outsourced technical teams via email, introducing exponentially more layers of approval and causing huge time delays with an increased risk of human error.

Solution: Centralised Knowledge Management

To realistically manage the increased complexity and ever changing customer service messaging, Knowledge Management software is required, this centralises all of your knowledge into one hub. One Knowledge Manager is now able to manage one database of information, dictating what information is suitable for customers to access via a Self-service tool or for employee’s eyes only. Additionally, data on how customers interact with this knowledge is tracked, giving Knowledge managers access to reporting suites that help them analyse and optimise their content, ensuring customer satisfaction and self-service success rates. Centralised knowledge management is a preventative measure, avoiding a multitude of problems that strain your call centres, hugely increasing costs and reducing online average order values. In short, Knowledge management tools:

Provide scalable flexibility and real-time updates;
Ensures consistency of messaging across all channels and teams;
Provide detailed analytical insights on customer interactions;

Online Customer Service solutions – where to start?

Luckily, there is enough time to prepare for a Covid Christmas. Working with a tenured, enterprise vendor with decades of experience ensures you are in the hands of a team experienced enough to deliver against a Christmas timeframe. Here is what an implementation window looks like for this year:

Image of Timeline step 1 - Sourcing Vender

Find a trusted provider whose solutions and expertise align with your needs.

Image of Timeline step 2 - Implementation

Integrate new tools into your existing ecosystem and establish new Knowledge Management best practices.

Image of Timeline step 3 - Mitigating Challenges

Use your new tool set to mitigate against the difficulties outlined above and thrive this Christmas.

The first Covid Christmas will be a full-scale stress test for all customer service operations. Retails are particularly vulnerable to outdated customer service systems that have not adapted to the ‘new normal’, and need to examine their processes and tools now to come out ahead as we move into 2021.

If you found this helpful and want to talk to us further about your specific organisational needs, please

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What Is Knowledge Management?

Posted on 22 July 2020 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

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“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” -Lewis Platt

What Is Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a practice used by a variety of companies to optimise their collective knowledge and the way is it used. It focuses on the process of identifying, capturing, organising, sharing and managing company knowledge.
Knowledge comes in many forms and can include:

Data
Information
Experience
Ideas
Perspectives

In recent decades, a shift in digitisation saw a greater demand for knowledge management; organisations learnt that the controlled and optimised sharing of knowledge could contribute to achieving operational and strategic objectives.

As a key function, it is responsible for integrating people, processes and knowledge management tools and technologies to encourage the seamless flow of knowledge throughout a company. Knowledge management considers knowledge as an asset and can reshape business culture into one that is collaborate, transparent and promotes knowledge sharing.

The practice of knowledge management extends far beyond intranets and databases and helps businesses deal with both explicit and tactic knowledge.

Let’s discuss the differences:

Explicit Knowledge

This is the codified knowledge that can be found in company databases, documents, records and files. It is essential to business and simple to extract and share. Examples include policy documents or agent scripts.

Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is difficult to communicate and therefore hard to capture and share. It is usually derived from experience and practice and is unique to a business – which is why it is so valuable.

Tactic knowledge requires good knowledge management that handles it with great care, ensuring that nothing gets lost in translation.

Knowledge management seeks to extract explicit knowledge, unlock tactic knowledge and seamlessly distribute both to the appropriate people. This could include serving employees or customers via knowledge management technology such as CRMs, knowledge bases or customers self-service tools

What Is Knowledge Management Software?

One of the greatest challenges when it comes to knowledge management is knowing how to execute it. The best way to do this is by implementing knowledge management software that can help you deliver your knowledge management strategy successfully.

Another prominent challenge that businesses find is getting employees to embrace the discipline. Just like any new practice or change within the workplace there will always be some uncertainty. How do you overcome this? By making it easy for your employees to embrace – which is where good knowledge management software comes in.

Knowledge management software helps businesses simplify the knowledge management process by organising, storing and sharing knowledge in a sophisticated yet user-friendly way.

Read: The knowledge management system buyer’s guide.

A Knowledge Base for example, is a popular knowledge management tool that acts like a library of knowledge that can be accessed by your company and developed whenever is necessary.

Such knowledge management software can hold thousands of articles of knowledge. They are engineered using advanced search algorithms, categorisation and views to help companies save time and organise knowledge in a digestible way.

Machine learning principles and Natural Language Processing (NLP) make finding answers simple. An employee can type a question into the search bar and a series of relevant results will be displayed. A knowledge base will learn over time based on user interaction and results to optimise the answers given. These results can easily be edited, developed and shared to assist the successful execution of knowledge management.

Employees become advocates of such software, not only is everything available at the click of a button, all in one place, but they are given the freedom to learn and retain crucial knowledge before it is potentially lost with employees that leave a company.

Find out how to effectively roll-out internal knowledge base software, here.

What to Look for in Knowledge Management Software

Any good knowledge management strategy is centred around effective knowledge management software
But what should you look for in knowledge management software?

Implementation and Integration

Effective knowledge management software integrates seamlessly into an existing ecosystem of products.

The knowledge platform should fit in with current processes, workflows and other knowledge and customer service software, such as:

Internally-facing applications that gives your team access to your company’s wider information, assisting them when talking to customers. This allows agents to quickly pull answers from one reliable, centralised source resulting in an improvement in First Contact Resolution (FCR) and Average Handling Times (AHT).
Customer self-service software, helping customers answer their own questions online. This reduces the overall number of inbound contacts for contact centres to process.

To integrate with 3rd party systems such as email management tools or CRMs, knowledge management software should be built on open RESTful APIs. This ensures compatibility with most 3rd parties, providing you with a full, ‘360 degree’ implementation of shared knowledge into your organisation and holistic analytics.

An image showing how Self-Service, 3rd Party Tools and Contact Centres all integrate with Knowledge

For more on essential knowledge management tools, click here.

User-friendly Interface

Consider software that offers a practical agent desktop or web interface for you to choose from. Software that includes user-friendly features such as note-taking, categories, views, internal tabs for quick viewing and customisable interfaces can help employees navigate software better, giving them the right knowledge quickly.

Such knowledge management tools can increase agent efficiency, offering relevant answers and optimising the time and accuracy needed to resolve customer queries.

Natural Language Processing

Knowledge management software that uses natural language processing (NLP) and AI-powered machine learning principles can enhance the quality of the answer that is delivered to the user (whether that’s an employee or customer).

Choose software that understands naturally phrased questions, can learn and uses search intent; taking into consideration the keyword, intent, grammar and popularity of the question to deliver the most relevant result.

Analytics

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Without comprehensive analytics, companies are working in the dark, blind to the effectiveness of the content in their knowledge base. Reporting and analytics suites help businesses learn and develop their knowledge management and should be central to any knowledge management product. Popular queries can be pulled to develop content around, whilst agent performance reports can be produced to measure efficiency.

Why Is Knowledge Management Important?

Knowledge Management concentrates on what is known and not documented. An approach that can help enhance company culture, remove siloed knowledge and by doing so, increase organisational efficiency.

We have significantly more knowledge stored in our brains than we do written down. All too often this becomes a problem for businesses when their long-term employees leave – their knowledge leaves with them. Years of accumulated tacit knowledge is lost just like that. Recovering and reteaching such unique knowledge proves incredibly time-consuming, costly and often impossible.

Another risk that companies face by not adopting knowledge management, involves knowledge silos. In a time when flexi and remote working is becoming the new norm and teams are often dispersed across locations, there comes a lack of sharing and collaborative culture – and this is how knowledge silos are formed. Knowledge management aims to eliminate knowledge silos within organisations so that information is accessible to the right people whenever they require it.

Unless it is encouraged, teams don’t always communicate. If the value of knowledge sharing is clear to employees and knowledge can be seen as an asset, then it will eventually become part of the culture.

Without knowledge management your company could miss a lot of invaluable, irreplaceable knowledge, resulting in wasted resources, high costs and frustrated employees and customers. It’s all about knowing what your business needs to know and making this available to the right people in the best way for them.

Benefits of Good Knowledge Management

How can knowledge management benefit your company and customers?

Improved Efficiency

One of the biggest impacts on business when it comes to knowledge management, is improved efficiency – particularly at an operational level.

Organised, accessible and digestible knowledge makes for faster decision making and therefore less time spent dealing with routine questions. The impact of this can be seen on the bottom line – a study by Gartner revealed that an 18% reduction in support costs occurred by encouraging knowledge management.Knowledge management means no more waiting around for that email response from HR, which you will then have to reply to a couple of times before eventually reaching an answer. It also results in significantly less time spent training and onboarding new employees, on average a 30% reduction in agent training times. This is because the internal knowledge that has already been captured and stored is permanently available for future starters at any time.

Customers can benefit from your knowledge management too, existing in the context of self-service, customers no longer need to wait for the answer to a FAQ, they can solve it themselves using the knowledge stored in your knowledge base.

Greater Accuracy

It’s perfectly normal for humans to make mistakes, but without knowledge management, companies run the risk of the same mistakes happening time and time again, whether it’s years apart or in different departments. The beauty of knowledge management is that resolutions can be stored and made available to prevent this from happening.

Knowledge management also allows for consistent information to be shared which is particularly important if you are communicating with customers. Providing inaccurate, inconsistent information to customers can prove problematic but easily avoided through knowledge management. All it takes is a simple search using a knowledge management tool and standardised company information and policies are available to consult.

Empowered Employees

Employees just want to do their jobs. So, when obstacles are put in the way of them fulfilling their tasks, such as lack of information or delays waiting for access to information, it can become incredibly frustrating for them.

In fact, a recent study revealed that 51% of participants felt frustrated at the inability to access a former colleague’s institutional knowledge, while 25% said they were overwhelmed. The impact of which can include low staff morale, subsequently affecting productivity.

Making knowledge available to agents who need it or wish to learn more can empower them. When given quick, easy access to the right information, without having to ask permission first can boost productivity and staff retention.

Customer-facing knowledge management tools, otherwise known as web self-service automate routine questions, removing the mundane from agents’ roles. As a result they can deal with more complex customer issues, promoting staff morale.

Satisfied Customers

The internal benefits your company experiences from adopting knowledge management can positively impact your customers too, enhancing the service and experience you provide them.

When knowledge is optimised effectively companywide, stored and shared in a knowledge management tool such as a knowledge base, customers can benefit from quick access to information such as return policies, how-to guides or troubleshooting videos.

20%

Did you know that 20% of routine questions can be handled online using knowledge management tools?

Source: Synthetix research
Self-service software integrates with your company knowledge base which, by utilising a filtered view, grants customers access to vital answers to their routine questions. Customers, who prefer to self-serve can resolve issues themselves, rather than having to contact a company representative directly and therefore has an enhanced experience – reflecting positively on NPS and CSAT ratings.

Cultural Shift

Embracing knowledge management within a company can have huge positive effects on teams. Whilst this culture shift won’t happen overnight, companies that embed knowledge management eventually experience a transparent knowledge sharing culture.

Not only does a knowledge sharing culture encourage collaboration across an organisation, producing a new array of ideas and innovation, it also helps to reshape employees’ perceptions of knowledge. Instead of viewing knowledge as a thing we all have in our heads, employees begin to see knowledge as an asset. They appreciate that just like people, finance and brand are valuable assets that require management and specialised systems , so does knowledge.

Get the most out of knowledge management with these 12 best practices.

Knowledge Management Process

The overall knowledge management process doesn’t need to be complex or lengthy. It does however require specialised technology to ensure smooth execution.

There are several ways that the knowledge management process can be broken down, but in its simplest form it can be categorised into 4 parts: discover, capture, organisation, share.

Let’s unpack these 4 steps further.

Discover

‘We only know what we know when we need to know it” – Dave Snowden

The discovery stage of the knowledge management process is responsible for finding out what exactly a business needs to know and where knowledge already exists. This generally includes explicit knowledge that is already documented, but perhaps in a fragmented way.

Knowledge management will extract this explicit knowledge through the data mining of company documents, intranets and other records. Good Knowledge Management software will be able to semi-automate this time-consuming but necessary process.

Capture

As the name suggests, this step focuses on the capturing of knowledge that is not documented. It concerns turning the tacit knowledge into explicit, consumable knowledge.

This is arguably the most challenging and time-consuming step of the knowledge management process; knowledge management must capture the knowledge that resides in employees’ brains, which has become second nature to them and therefore difficult to communicate.

There are a number of methods that Knowledge Managers use to capture tacit knowledge including:

Observation
Interviews
Surveys
Retrospect (reflection meetings that take place after the completion of a project)
Knowledge harvesting (often involving senior employees)

Organise

Once knowledge has been discovered and captured, knowledge management must unpack and process it in a way that makes it consumable for all. This requires deep analysis to see how knowledge can be best organised, displayed and incorporated into the company.

The organisation and accessibility of knowledge is the very essence of knowledge management. Therefore, it is crucial that this step is conducted successfully.

Most businesses use knowledge management software to organise and store their knowledge. Purpose-built systems order and display knowledge effectively to remove the fear, uncertainly and ambiguity surrounding knowledge.

Making the right knowledge available to the right people at the right time is key. Without this step, a company would have masses of vital knowledge intricately stored and organised with no way to access it.

Knowledge sharing pulls all the other knowledge management steps together. It takes all the acquired knowledge and communicates it throughout a company. Some Knowledge Management Software even gamifies aspects of knowledge sharing, allowing employees to submit articles for approval, which if used lets others comment on and interact with.

Knowledge can be delivered via presentations and meetings but the most effective way to share it is through knowledge management software, allowing knowledge to be consistent and available on demand depending on who you are in the company.

To find out more about the knowledge management process, click here.

Conclusion

Mastering knowledge management can be challenging, it’s an elusive discipline that deals with complex knowledge types and intricate processes. But if your company objectives are based around efficiency and wish to encourage a more transparent, collaborative culture then knowledge management is fundamental for you.

If you would like to explore knowledge management further, you can read more here, or

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if you’d like to discuss your organisational needs.

The End of Furlough: How the Energy Sector Should Prepare Customer Service

Posted on 22 July 2020 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

The End of Furlough: How the Energy Sector Should Prepare Customer Service

Higher costs, falling CSAT scores and exhausted contact channels, Energy providers are feeling the effects that COVID-19 has had, and continues to have on customer service. But how can Energy providers effectively deal with customer issues and encourage customer retention when there is a dramatic influx in contact? During COVID-19, Synthetix clients have experienced average contact volumes rise by 203%, compared to the same period in 2019 – and with the government furlough scheme ending in October, it is expected that the situation will worsen. Energy providers must be diligent if they are to thrive through this period. This blog explores the factors that have caused such pressure on customer service and provides tried and tested solutions to help companies thrive moving forward.

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Customer Service Costs in The Energy Sector Have Dramatically Increased During COVID-19 – This Will Likely Continue.

A Surge in Contact

What has caused a recent 24% increase in contact across businesses?

COVID-19, subsequent months of ‘lockdown’ and social distancing measures have impacted the economy significantly, causing it to shrink by a drastic 20.4% , following this, is mass redundancies and rising unemployment rates.

These series of events have considerably affected Energy provider customers, putting many of them in vulnerable situations that warrant immediate customer support.

As contact volume is surging, so is the complexity of queries, which demands more time to handle. This impacts not only the cost to serve customers – causing it to skyrocket – but can also negatively affect resolution quality.

Phone and Email Channels Are Unnecessarily Exhausted

“All of our agents are currently busy with other customers; you are number 78 in the queue”

A recent study by Which? revealed the most popular way in which customers contact Energy suppliers is via phone and email – due to the current climate and recent increase in contact volume, this has likely exacerbated, putting additional pressure on the contact channels.

Both phone and email contact channels require human supervision and therefore accumulate high employee costs. Currently, routine queries occur as normal but there is an influx of complex issues that need resolving as a result of COVID-19 – together these support queries are flooding phone and email channels.

Many Energy providers do not utilise alternative contact channels such as live chat and chatbots that can mitigate contact significantly by automating routine queries. In fact this is the preferred method of contact for many customers – 89% of millennials would rather find the answer to a question themselves using self-service, live chat or chatbot than pick up the phone. Allowing millennial customers to use their preferred contact channel of choice would significantly cut operation costs when contact volumes are high, yet Energy companies are not utilising this preference and therefore unnecessarily accumulating huge costs.

CSAT Scores Are Falling

Poor First Contact Resolution

Since the pandemic, support teams have struggled to resolve contact queries the first time round, a recent study revealed that some companies have seen a 150% increase in resolution time which as a result, has impacted customer satisfaction negatively.

Energy support teams that are ill equipped with knowledge cannot resolve issues during first contact. Often due to lack of sufficient and flexible knowledge, agents result in transferring customers or arranging call backs, both of which contribute to poor First Contact Resolution (FCR) and longer wait times.

When customers are transferred from agent to agent, left on hold for hours and not called back, they feel undervalued; that their time has been wasted or that they have been forgotten – all of this on top of an already emotionally sensitive query is a recipe for disaster. The frustration that so many customers are currently experiencing is impacting company CSAT scores. In fact, since the COVID-19 crisis, CSAT scores have declined by 28% on average across both B2B and B2C.

The Bad CSAT Trend That Could Be Disastrous

Energy providers that are failing to address problems such as poor FCR, long wait times and cumbersome support options since the COVID-19 outbreak, are experiencing a decrease in CSAT scores and influx of negative customer reviews

Customers, especially those who feel let down by Energy providers this year, during their most vulnerable times, are switching to companies who are beating the bad CSAT trend.

Energy providers who do not actively seek to improve on factors that impact their bad CSAT scores, will continue to receive negative reviews and eventually lose customers. During times of hardship, loyalty is prominent and this could be the differentiating factor in which energy companies survive the next 6 months.

Things Are Going to Escalate

October, the month in which the government furlough scheme will end, is fast approaching and will present a whole new series of problems for Energy customers.

It is expected that of the 1.1 million employers that furloughed their staff this year, 44% expect to make some or all of their staff redundant when the scheme comes to an end. This will not only leave a significant chunk of the population in vulnerable positions due to the economic climate, but potentially in a 5-week queue to receive their first Universal Credit payment.

For Energy support teams this means an influx of new and sensitive contact queries. The problem here is that the complex issues need agent prioritisation but will backed up behind hundreds, even thousands of everyday routine questions.

So, what happens when a desperate customer, who:

Has recently been made redundant
Cannot find a job due to the economy
Has been told by Universal Credit there is a 5-week wait until their first payment
Requires agent support but has to wait in line for hours behind routine enquirers?

Poor customer service and experience.

With “poor customer service” listed as the main reason for customers receiving compensation in 2019, can Energy suppliers afford to have poor contact solutions in 2020?

Solution

Reduce Overall Contact Levels with Online Self-Service

Energy providers need tools that help prioritise complex queries that require human support and that deflect FAQs.

Online self-service software, connected to a wider knowledge base, allows customers to find answers to routine questions themselves. Natural language processing (NLP) and algorithms retrieve relevant answers based on what the customer types, automating a huge segment of questions, mitigating overall contact by up to 20% (Synthetix research).

This gives support agents the bandwidth they require to speak to customers with sensitive or complex issues that need resolving quickly.

Decrease Phone Queue Times by Channel Shifting

Not every customer waiting in a phone line needs to be there. Energy suppliers should utilise other contact channels to decrease phone queue times and serve different customer preferences.

Live chat software for instance, allows agents to simultaneously chat to multiple customers and rather than transferring them or calling them back, can consult their integrated knowledge base for quick and consistent results.

Not only does live chat encourage agent efficiency, improving FCR by up to 80% (Synthetix research), but for many customers, it is the easier, more convenient contact channel that they prefer.

Boost CSAT To Capitalise on Customers Unhappy with The Competition and Encourage Switching to You

Energy providers that deploy unified customer service solutions, such as online self-service, live chat and chatbots can benefit from efficiency. Not only are routine questions deflected and dealt with using automation, but more complex issues can be resolved and at a quicker rate.

Mostly importantly, allowing such channel flexibility means customers are satisfied with the service they have been provided. That thing that they desperately needed rectifying is now resolved, they have peace of mind and trust in their Energy supplier during these turbulent times.

The ability to delegate customers based on their query type to the appropriate contact channel will have a direct impact on CSAT, and this is what will create customer loyalty, promote customer retention and encourage customers to switch to you.

Non Synthetix Client

Conclusion

For Energy suppliers, 2020 has been and will continue to prove challenging when it comes to serving customers and keeping them satisfied. Already this year, the Work and Pensions Secretary reported that in 1 week the Universal Credit claimant rate had been tenfold – Energy providers must prepare for similar or worse events when the end of the furlough scheme occurs.

Ineffective contact channel solutions paired with a wave of new and complex customer queries has proved detrimental to support teams. But CSAT scores needn’t suffer. Through implementing the right tools, Synthetix clients have defied the bad CSAT trend that many other companies are experiencing and have seen improvements through this COVID-19 period.

Synthetix clients also benefits from:

Overall contact deflection of up to 50%
40% reduction in AHT
80% increase in FCR

(Synthetix research)

If you found this article helpful and would like to talk to us about improving your customer service, please

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What is a Knowledge Base?

Posted on 22 June 2020 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

What is Knowledge Management?

A knowledge base is a centralised library of information that has been captured, collected and curated in a way that is easy to look up, edit and share with teams and customers.

Acting as your company’s repository of knowledge, a knowledge base contains knowledge articles that have been expertly converted from data and configured into consumable, bitesize pieces of information. Such articles contain answers to common queries and generally surround your company, product or services.

In short, a knowledge base helps to provide the right people with the right knowledge at the right time.

The knowledge contained within a knowledge base has been specially harvested and extracted from several data sources, including:

Company documents
Intranets
Databases
Observation
Employee interviews

Whilst some data is explicit and already codified, for example, HR policies and product specifications, some is tacit and therefore difficult to identify and articulate, for instance, a salesperson’s subconscious expertise. To turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, expert skill, time and deep analysis are required before it’s subsequently ready to be converted into consumable articles.

Knowledge articles can contain text, images, video and other formats to communicate results, they are generally configured to match brand personality and tone of voice.

Read: Why an FAQ page is no substitute for a knowledge base

How Does A Knowledge Base Work?

An intelligent knowledge base is built using AI and harnesses powerful Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify search intent. In response to a new query, the knowledge base retrieves and delivers the most relevant results to the searcher – whether that be an employee, agent or customer. NLP achieves this by unpicking, isolating and analysing each word that is entered to comprehend context and intent and subsequently match it with the best possible result.

NLP-driven knowledge bases ensure efficiency and fast answers both:

Internally as a centralised data repository for sourcing answers
Externally through customer-facing self-service applications for answering routine queries

For Your Teams

Knowledge for your teams is the internal-facing knowledge base view used by agents to facilitate customer support.

This technology is purpose-built with the contact centre in min, providing agents with a library of results and resolutions at their fingertips. Whether an agent is interacting with a customer via live chat channel or telephone, they simply begin by typing in the customer query and on each keypress and through the power of NLP, your knowledge base suggests relevant articles. This impacts Average Handling Times (AHT) and helps to significantly reduce support costs.

With access to the right knowledge, time otherwise spend asking supervisors questions is eliminated, the result of which means more time is dedicated to helping customers, contributing to improved CSAT and NPS scores.

An image showing the knowledge interface

Editing, updating and adding new knowledge articles happens in real-time to ensure that all sources that are linked to your knowledge base distribute the same, consistent information.

For Your Customers

Knowledge for your customers provides them with access to your knowledge base content via self-service tools online. Whether it’s a self-service widget or chatbot, website visitors seeking support can resolve their own issues by accessing a version of your company knowledge base. This customer-friendly version, otherwise known as a ‘view’ is configured within you wider knowledge base; a view determines and filters the content that is available to an audience – for instance, the view connected to a self-service tool, targeted at customers would exclude any internal or HR-related articles.

Customers simply type their query into the search bar and NLP gets to work; by unravelling the sentence structure of the query, it identifies intent and matches it with the most relevant results. This is particularly valuable for contact centre efficiency as these self-service tools can deal with large volumes of routine queries that would otherwise make their way to contact centres, often causing congestion. Instead, such tools deflect an average of 25% of contact by automating the vast majority of routine queries. This not only cuts support costs but provides agents with the bandwidth required to deal with more complex, non-routine customer issues.

Knowledge for your customers also helps to enhance CX and as a result, boosts CSAT and NPS ratings. Today most of you customers prefer to self-serve if there is an option to do so – 67% in fact – it is far quicker and more convenient than agent-assisted channels. Therefore, by including self-service tools, powered by your knowledge base as part of your online offering, customer satisfaction improves.

Why Use a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base underpins any effective knowledge management strategy and is considered an essential tool within the customer service ecosystem.

At the core of knowledge management, it is what makes deployment successful, all whilst:

Boosting operational efficiency
Assisting in critical decision making
Saving support costs
Improving CSAT scores
Enhancing CX
Empowering employees

Benefits of Using A Knowledge Base for Teams

Improved First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Customers expect their queries to be answered during the first interaction they have with an agent. They don’t want to be called back, transferred or have to use an alternative channel to ask the same question.

The internal-facing knowledge base that is utilised by agents when engaging with customers through live chat or telephony helps to increase First Contact Resolution (FCR). It is their centralised library of knowledge and is available to them within the same interface. Because all relevant information is readily available and easy to find, this removes the need to transfer customers or call customers back whilst agents find adequate answers.

How could an improvement in FCR affect your company’s bottom line?

If a call centre of 50 agents has an average FCR of 74% and is increased by even 1%, it could lead to an annual saving of £46,100 based on an average cost per call of £3.64.

But there are potentially bigger savings to be made. By implementing a centralised knowledge base with a good knowledge management strategy, companies can experience significant increases to their average FCR, positively impacting the bottom line.

Reduced Average Handling Times (AHT) And Support Costs

Equipped with a knowledge base rich in answers, solutions and resources, agents no longer have to frantically research or put customers on hold whilst they consult supervisors for resolutions. An internal knowledge base helps teams resolve customer queries more efficiently and as a result, can cut AHT by up to 40%.

The internal knowledge base that agents use to resolve customer queries includes features that speed up handling times. The interface includes a ‘mini knowledge base’, that makes looking up answers quick and easy with no need to switch between tabs and windows. The AI-predictive suggestions feature recommends articles in the same window with every keypress, significantly reducing the time it would otherwise take to source an article.

Furthermore, when you integrate your knowledge base with live chat, the live keypress feed feature helps to reduce AHT further. It reveals what a customer is typing on every keypress so that agent can proactively solve a query often before the customer has hit send.

The result of such features that bring your AHT down includes significant savings in operational costs. It allows agents to work more efficiently, minimising downtime and resolving more customer queries.

Reduced Training and Onboarding Times

Companies can reduce their training and onboarding times by up to 30% by storing important training, company and product information in their knowledge base. You can essentially skip the learning curve by providing starters with the tools to upskill themselves. The provision of the knowledge base ensures that new employees don’t have to know an answer to a query or process in your contact centre, only to know how to find that information.

This fast tracks new users to proficiency in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take to manually train them.

Consistency and Accuracy of Information

One study revealed that 76% of customers receive conflicting answers when it comes to customer support. Providing inconsistent or inaccurate information to your stakeholders can prove detrimental to brand credibility and reputation, resulting in anything from poor reviews to serious legal action. By placing a centralised knowledge base at the heart of customer service, communications and other operations you ensure that all information that is circulated is consistent. Because it can integrate with all your customer service and 3rd party business tools, any information that is served is from the same source, therefore eliminating conflicting answers.

If any knowledge must be updated, any changes reflect in real-time through all channels.

Read: How to roll-out a successful internal knowledge base. Here

Benefits of Using Self-Service for Customers

Customer Satisfaction

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect quick access to relevant information, delivered conveniently. Depending on a company’s capabilities to provide this could be the difference between a good CSAT rating or a damaging customer complaint.

There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than struggling to find an answer to a simple routine question online. One study found that 53% of customers are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question. Which is why offering self-service tools that are connected to your knowledge base is critical.

Such AI-powered tools utilise NLP to ensure that regardless of how a query is phrased, the most relevant result is always served. It helps to avoid redundant responses that negatively affect CSAT scores.

Enhanced CX

Knowledge for your customers can take on the form of different self-service tools. Powered by your centralised knowledge base, customers can access knowledge articles in several different ways, including through:

An FAQ-style portal: customers who are actively seeking answers can navigate here and find answers to their questions
A widget: this self-service option can be configured to display on certain pages, or when certain conditions are met to promote CSAT and revenue
A chatbot: acting as your digital concierge, it guides your customer through their journey, helping them to reach their destination

Images to show the multiple ways in which web self-service software can be displayed to customers.

For more on the different types of self-service, click here.

Each type of self-service journey ensures a positive CX and escalation options for when an agent is required to deal with questions that are non-routine.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to know more about knowledge management, you can read our guide here, or for advice about knowledge base software, please get in touch.

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Customer Experience – Seeing ‘clearly’ in 2020

Posted on 3 January 2020 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

Customer Experience – Seeing ‘clearly’ in 2020

Having said goodbye to 2019, it’s the time of year when most of us will reflect on the events of the year, or the decade that has passed. It’s also the time most of us will think about New Year’s resolutions. While many of us might want to ditch the carbs or learn a new language, what will 2020 hold for business resolutions?

With Customer Experience a real differentiator, organisations can not afford to have a ‘business as usual’ mentality. Why? Because customer experiences, that don’t have a real business impact, isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Customer expectations are rising faster than a souffle at a festive dinner. And as such should constantly be accessed, because if businesses wait too long to rise to new customer expectations, it might sink their company’s reputation.

Weather you thank (or blame) technology for most of these new customer expectations, the shear amount of information accessible today at the speed of light and in the palm of people’s hands makes mostly everyone anticipate more. These expectations are at the top of the list for most businesses, well, at least in theory. Recent research by Forrester show nearly 95% of business leaders saying that providing a good customer experience is their top strategic priority and 75% want to use customer experience as a competitive advantage, however just 37% of business leaders have a dedicated budget for customer experience improvement strategies. This shows that the disparity between having great intensions and ideas for CX and the actual implementation thereof.

In order to deliver enhanced customer experience, businesses need to understand what customers want now and how it will drive their satisfaction and loyalty.

It’s kind of curious that in the all-encompassing online world we have come to accept, in which so many business and personal interactions can be anonymous, customers want very personalised experiences. While many of us love the convenience of online shopping, we still prefer the personal one-to-one experience of visiting a brick and mortar shop.

Customers expect a business to have all the information on products or services where they expect to find them. And when it’s not where they expect to find it, they simply leave. Research by Sales cycle revealed the average cart abandonment rate for retail ecommerce sites reached 84.24% in the first half of 2019. Having technology able to identify when consumers are struggling or hesitant to complete their purchase could have a dramatic increase on the bottom line. In fact, one of the UK’s biggest pharma retailers saw a significant drop in shopping cart abandonment rates after implementing live chat triggers to alert agents to hesitant shoppers.

Customers want to be able to interact with a company and its people anywhere across various channels like self-service, voice, digital and social channels. And although voice is still a popular option, customers now expect to be able to find the answers for themselves online. In fact, experts at Gartner predicted that 85 percent of customer interactions to be handled without human agents in 2020.

Self-service is by no means a new concept, but according to Forrester it was one of the top trends in 2019 and it’s not going to go away soon. Self-service is no longer a “nice to have”. It’s a necessity to providing a positive customer experience. Dimension Data reports growth in every digital channel and a 12% decrease in phone volume with customers of all ages moving away from using the phone to using web and mobile self-service, communities, virtual agents, automated chat dialogs, or chatbots as a first point of contact with a company.

However, shockingly, according to Northridge Group, businesses are still struggling to deliver the fundamentals of great customer experience with 57% of consumers saying that they frequently have trouble finding answers on a company’s website. The problem appears to be that businesses implement these self-service options from a business’ perspective, not from their customers’ view. The business creates the experience based on what they want the customer to do and see; not on what the customer may want to do instead.

So, while offering as many channels to communicate as customers demand is important, it’s probably more vital that communication is seamless and agile.

Investing in integrated knowledge across a website, contact centre and channels like live chat will ensure consistent and accurate answers from a single source of truth. Customer service handled via automation should not be complex to use.

Customers’ tolerance for jumping through hoops has diminished dramatically over the years. Customers now believe they should have what they want the minute they request it. They don’t want to repeat themselves and expect the same great service during peak and quieter periods.

However, before businesses can determine how to develop the ideal customer experience, they must decide what that term means to them; customer experience means different things to different industries.

And whilst understanding the elements of the customer experience strategy is a good first step — successfully implementing it is another. We believe these 9 key points might provide some assistance to businesses wanting to kick-start their customer experience strategy in 2020.

Plan for the worst-case scenario

High call volumes come at times of crisis or peak trading periods. Having the right technology in place to support contact centre staff is imperative.

Plan to be flexible

The contact centre is only one contact channel available for customers – dependent on the nature of the enquiry, would it benefit the company and customers to handle enquiries across other channels like a Chatbot/Intelligent Virtual Assistant, Live Chat, FAQ self-service or Social channels.

Be integrated

Are all contact centre staff up-to-date with the latest information and how is this maintained through technology? When staff shifts change or if they leave, does it affect the transferral of knowledge – how is this communicated. Do you have an Agent Knowledge-base?

Enhance resources

Given all the tools needed (such as a cloud contact centre solution), is it possible, in times of crisis or peak trading times, for temporary and non-frontline staff to be used as agents following minimal training?

Be pro-active

Avoid the need for customer to call in the first place. Is there another channel by which they could answer their queries? Push out service updates via social media to communicate with customers in advance of any issue to minimise contact?

Measure and control

Quickly and efficiently responding across contact channels to customer queries is key – is there a mechanism in place to monitor customer feedback to improve the quality of products and services and level of response in the future?

Prioritise

Do most customers need support during work hours, or do they frequently require assistance out of office hours? Which are the most effective/popular convenient contact channels for customers – focus on these first.

Training

It is imperative that all contact entre staff are trained to handle support, especially during seasonal influxes of contact. Effective communication, getting answers to customer quickly and consistently across all channels, can have a huge impact on how customers perceive your brand.

Prepare to adjust

A legacy infrastructure often risks only noticing failure when all has gone wrong. It doesn’t have the ability of gathering granular information to help understand how any issues might be developing. Investigate your infrastructure to see if it should be improved, updated, or replaced by more relevant technology.

Wishing you a prosperous 2020

Patiently building a business case that shows how technology solutions will meet user needs, and therefore encourage the uptake of digital channels, will help to allay fears of making poor decisions or going down the wrong path in 2020.

The resources section of our website can offer insight and the technology for developing your customer experience strategy such as:

1. Reducing customer contact – improving first contact resolution
2. Offering a consistent multi-channel customer service
3. Improving operational and service cost efficiency
4. Increasing customer satisfaction & loyalty levels

And to prove the return of enhanced customer experience by leveraging technology, why not see for yourself with our ROI calculator?

Are you ready to take the next step towards delivering exceptional customer experience, driven by AI technology that can deliver quick-win business results?

Retailers – Dreaming of a ‘Black-Friday Christmas’?

Posted on 18 December 2019 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

Retailers – Dreaming of a ‘Black-Friday Christmas’?

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday over, are you feeling ‘Christmassy’ yet?

With Christmas a mere week away (take a deep breath), retailers should be smiling with new figures showing an increase in footfall of 3.3% in comparison to last year’s Black Friday. According to Springboard shopping centres had the best footfall uplift and they believe the reason to be the fact that Black Friday fell on payday.

There’s no denying that Black Friday is BIG business, however is this trend ultimately good for both consumers and retailers? Having barely shut the front door to Trick-or-Treaters the festive frenzy drags on for weeks. During the pre-festive season, the ‘Golden Quarter’ has become a bargain hunter’s dream. However, many retailers believe Black Friday could be collective suicide for the industry. In the past few years shoppers have seen no need to go shopping if they might get things cheaper the following week. Why would they when they are being trained to expect big discounts over Black Friday?

When retailers promote and prolong the discount holiday shopping season, driving down prices to remain competitive and attract footfall, it’s no wonder that by the time Boxing Day dawns, after so much discounting, shoppers show ‘discount fatigue’ with January sales figures lukewarm.

Not to sound like a Bah-humbug (I actually love Christmas), but there is a darker side to the ‘Golden Quarter’ for businesses and consumers amongst all the tinsel and festive cheer. With customer experience a key differentiator, mega-discounting runs the risk of shattering carefully cultivated customer journeys with a ‘price is everything’ attitude. For example, consumers my want to browse in-store, order online, have their order delivered and or pick is up from a convenient collection point. They might want to return item/s to the store, and when they do, pick up an alternative item, ordered via a mobile app. At each step they expect retailers to know who they are and what their recent interactions with the brand have been.
Businesses that flourish during the festive period understand that customer experience can change the attitude of customers towards their favourite brands, so it’s of utmost importance to deliver the same levels of customer service during peak shopping season to that of quieter periods. However, some retailers are still caught off-guard, unprepared for the escalation of customer interactions during this busy period and last-minute shoppers still expecting exceptional service.

For instance, many businesses will be employing extra staff in the lead up to Christmas as part of their customer service strategy, however many newbies will not have the same knowledge about products, refund or exchange procedures, like permanent staff. A clear multi-channel strategy is required to maintain high levels of customer experience. Deploying AI-powered online customer service software to ensure right, consistent answers are delivered to customers regardless of channel, and to assist temporary and permanent contact centre staff, could be the competitive advantage to provide the high levels of customer support needed.

Having produced an amazing and successful Christmas ad campaign might to wonders for PR, simple missteps can cause shoppers to stray to a competitor such as websites buckling under an unprecedented influx of traffic on Black Friday. When this happens, customers will be quick to exploit the benefits of online shopping – not having to brave the weather, crowds or queues – by spending money at a competitor, from the comfort of their own sofas, in two clicks.

It’s clear that the consumer is in control, enabled through technology to remain constantly connected and more empowered than ever before. Multi-dimensional consumer behaviour is driving the changing the retail landscape at an unparalleled rate and though the channels they’re using to shop with are changing, their expectations are not.

Continuously nurturing relationships with your customers is crucial to growing your business, especially during peak times. The questions is: Will 2020 be the start of a beautiful customer experience journey for your business?

How CX can help businesses thrive during periods of political paralysis

Posted on 26 November 2019 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

How CX can help businesses thrive during periods of political paralysis

The UK economy has been in a stop-start mode all year, with growth disrupted by the various Brexit deadlines.

Brexit has been given a great deal of political airtime, but no one has been able to confidently predict the effect it will have on businesses or consumers, although many have tried.

For Synthetix, the issue is and less about political egos and more about how a departure from the EU will affect our current and future clients, the facts of risks, potential threats, benefits and difficulties of both sides of the argument so that businesses can begin to make informed decisions around planning for the future.
We’ve been talking about Brexit for more than three years now and even if we exit on 31 January 2020, negotiating permanent trading relationships will not happen overnight. And with little clarity emerging from Westminster and the population now bracing itself for another General Election, businesses are still none the wiser as to what’s around the corner.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

The infamous words of Winston Churchill contain a recognisable truth which is why they have resonated into an adage frequently deployed during times of uncertainty. But uncertainty requires an answer. Uncertainty requires action because the alternative is procrastination and stagnation. In uncertainty, lies opportunity.

On the face of it, during times of trouble, it might seem sensible to sit on the sidelines, reducing spending and not investing in ‘non-essentials’ such as marketing or technology. Yet it’s a false economy.

As it is with recession, so it is with the potential implications of Brexit.

Uncertainty opens new avenues as companies and organisations flex and change.
In the race to not only survive, but thrive against competitors, it might seem difficult to excel in the turns when others pushing down hard on the breaks. However, during the last period of uncertainty – the financial crisis in the late 2000’s which caused the deepest UK recession since the Second World War – 20% of companies in the bottom 25 percent soared to the top by end of the recession. They did so not by falling into a cost-cutting trap like others, but by increasing efficiency and investing in customer experience before the downturn hit.

During difficult times consumers have a choice about where they spend their money. Better customer experience (CX) will not only help businesses weather the uncertain outcomes of Brexit, it will can put them in a position to excel.

Businesses that have thrived during times of financial uncertainty, fought against the cost reduction tactic of redundancy to cut costs. Instead they searched for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks with technology and reskill employees for more rewarding work to drive customer success. Investing their efforts in this way, realised not just cost-savings, but opportunities to reroute gains to customers — which meant they stayed around longer giving them a higher lifetime value.

In fact, during the last recession, while Office Depot cut it’s workforce by 6 percent, their competitor, Staples increased theirs by 10 percent. This allowed Staples to serve their customers better, alongside a reorientation around offerings such as personalised printing, business and technical services. The next three years saw Staples, on average, to be thirty percent more profitable than Office Depot. And more recently, 2015 saw Staples acquiring Office Depot.

Now is the time for businesses to show their clients that they care. Furthermore, now is the time to demonstrate their utility – to answer their questions and provide sensible improvement where necessary. Now is the time to invest in automation and train employees in areas that have a direct correlation to customer experience.

It’s time to evoke those inspiring words again

Irrespective of what happens to the UK over the next few years, customers will always have questions that need answers.

Brexit is an opportunity to get closer to your audience. It is an opportunity to refocus efforts and be genuinely helpful to existing and potential customers. It’s an opportunity to do customer experience better than before. Do this and you will reap the rewards. Can businesses afford, given the risks to their reputation and revenue to do nothing?

For more insight into the delivery of enhanced customer experience the following articles may be of interest:

E-tail is NOT the enemy
The ultimate tech stack to improve CSAT and agent efficiency
The first step towards AI can benefit the bottom line

Etail is not the enemy

Posted on 12 November 2019 | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment

Etail is not the enemy

How the High Street can leverage technology to boost the bottom line this festive season

November marks one month into the “Golden Quarter” shopping phenomenon. It’s hard to believe that Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a mere three weeks away. This time of the year sees many of us execute the ritual of changing our spending habits from essentials to hunting for bargains, ‘perfect gifts’ and more extravagant purchases. With the cycle of promotions seemingly starting earlier each year, us Brits have come to expect retailers to deliver good tidings and cheery returns for more than just twelve days.

Although several large British retailers have publicly stated that they will not be participating in any Black Friday promotions this year – preferring to invest in year-round lower prices – spend this Black Friday and Cyber Monday is estimated to be £7 billion. In fact, this shopping trend annually accounts for as much as 30 percent of sales, albeit that headlines of yet another British High Street closure this week will have many traditional outlets worry if 2019 will be a merry celebration or more a hangover for their bottom line.

Many retailers believe that e-tail is to blame for the decline in footfall and plummet in consumer confidence, but is Amazon about to eat everyone’s Christmas dinner? And how can traditional outlets compete?

Swapping trolleys for home delivery?

E-tail is not the enemy. There is more to the story of physical versus digital than meets the eye.

Britain is now the biggest online shopping nation in the developed world, with almost two thirds of adults using the internet to buy goods or services, according to IMRG, a body which represents the UK’s online retailers. Although it must be said that online sales only account for 25% of overall retail sales, which proves our persistent desire for an in-person shopping experience.

Multidimensional consumer behaviour is driving the changing the retail landscape at an unparalleled rate and it has a lot to do with the super computers (smartphones) in our pockets.

Our smartphones appear to have become symbiotic to our existence. From checking our spelling, the weather, the fastest route to commute or ordering anything in a few clicks without having to leave our sofa, our omni-present connectivity expands into our physical shopping habits – driven by our desire to access information on products and services and to compare prices creating new demands and pressures for offline and online retailers alike.

Advances in technology has resulted in a society with low patience of slow and old fashioned ‘analog-like’ service models. We’ve become accustomed to having on-demand services, from streaming movies through Netflix, booking and Uber or ordering food from Deliveroo without any further human assistance.

So how can retailers ensure they survive in this world where customers demand and expect seamless convenience?

Breaking down siloes to connect shopper behaviour online and in-store

The winners this Christmas will be those retailers who are able to transport the digital world into their stores in order to create convenient and memorable customer experiences.

Recognising the unique advantages of a physical location, traditional retailers can use technology to leverage the different benefits of traditional, in-person shopping in ways that digital sites can only dream about, enabling retailers to offer consumers a truly omni-channel shopping experience.

Not too long ago, retailers had no way to link what a shopper bought or looked at online to their behaviour in-store. Today however, retailers that have invested in AI-driven technology can analyse meaningful data such as location, shopping history and context and are seeing rising sales as a result.

Click, click = instore ka-ching!

By blending digital services with in-store operations retailers can benefit from the growing popularity of cross-platform ‘Click and Collect’ options. Click & Collect is an attractive option for customers who desire more flexibility from their delivery options, whilst still appealing to the convenience of online shopping. Consumers can shop when they want online, on any device, from anywhere, able to compare prices, with the in-store ease of collection. The merging of digital and physical not only drives consumers to a physical store, but also drives impulse buys with figures from JDA’s Customer Pulse Report revealing 1 in 4 shoppers making additional purchases in-store when picking up Click & Collect orders. And with delivery backlogs a concern during the lead up to the festive period, this alternative option can help ensure customer expectations are met.

Aligning back-end operations with front-end customer service

Time has become a pricey commodity. No-one likes waiting. Customers of all ages now expect speedier service, partly because successful brands, both start-ups and established players, have shown it’s possible to speed up service without sacrificing quality, but Millennials (which have now surpassed Baby Boomers as the world’s largest living generations and biggest spenders) are speed freaks.

If an app or website takes too long to load, they’ll abandon it and use another. Their diet of on-demand services has made them superb multi-taskers who expect convenience and they don’t mind paying more for it.

Convenience creates loyalty, whether a shopper is transacting online or instore, or when need support before or after a sale. Convenience should be key focus throughout a customer journey, but especially so when consumers need support. Untimely responses to customer queries are one of the hallmarks of poor customer service and precious time wasted. Customer response-rates, product shipments, service offers, and return policies all need to be as smooth as possible. Digital support channels can offer convenient, 24/7, instant real-time support with little customer effort. Which is why many retailers are using AI-driven digital customer service technology at every step of the supply chain, to offer the seamless, streamlined experience that consumers now demand.

However, although digital support channels have become the preferred choice for customer support, it’s shocking how many retailers still struggle to implement a robust platform that can facilitate automated, multi-channel communication. Retailers will need to adapt to keep customers engaged with instant access to the information through integrated Natural Language Search FAQs, live chat and intelligent chatbots across the contact centre and social platforms too.

The future of the UK retail industry

There is no way of knowing precisely how 2019 will play out for the UK’s retail sector as we face the uncertain consequences of the decision of an election and yet again, Brexit.

However, the key takeaway for brands and retailers is the need to embrace change. Physical retail is not dead. Boring retail is. Consumers are confident, and they are planning to spend.

To exploit return, brands and retailers must be prepared to think differently and pro-actively support new consumer standards around when, where and how their key audiences plan to shop this holiday season. The winners this Christmas will be those retailers who are able to transport the digital world into their stores in order to create convenient and memorable customer experiences. If technology is embraced and integrated in a way that empowers employees, serves customers and improves the bottom line, retailers can look forward to a profitable Christmas.

An intelligent Knowledge base

Why Is Self-Service Software So Important Today?

Self-Service Is the Key to Efficient Customer Service Operations

Changing Customer Needs and Expectations

Millennials and Gen Z prefer Self-service

Shift in Digitisation

What Are the Benefits of Using Self-Service Software?

Improved CSAT

Reduced Operational Costs

Consistent Answers

Human-like Understanding

Enhanced Customer Experience

Empowered Employees

Implementing Effective Self-service Software

Low/No-Code Implementation

Streamlined Integrations With 3rd Party Systems

Escalation

Reporting and Analytics

Preparing customer service for retail’s first Covid Christmas

Online Customer Service solutions – where to start?

Synthetix have the complete platform of customer service tools.Book a demo of any of our products below

What Is Knowledge Management

Explicit Knowledge

Tacit Knowledge

What Is Knowledge Management Software?

What to Look for in Knowledge Management Software

Implementation and Integration

User-friendly Interface

Natural Language Processing

Analytics

Why Is Knowledge Management Important?

Benefits of Good Knowledge Management

Improved Efficiency

Greater Accuracy

Empowered Employees

Satisfied Customers

Did you know that 20% of routine questions can be handled online using knowledge management tools?

Cultural Shift

Knowledge Management Process

Discover

Capture

Organise

Share

Conclusion

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Customer Service Costs in The Energy Sector Have Dramatically Increased During COVID-19 – This Will Likely Continue.

A Surge in Contact

Phone and Email Channels Are Unnecessarily Exhausted

CSAT Scores Are Falling

Poor First Contact Resolution

The Bad CSAT Trend That Could Be Disastrous

Things Are Going to Escalate

Solution

Reduce Overall Contact Levels with Online Self-Service

Decrease Phone Queue Times by Channel Shifting

Boost CSAT To Capitalise on Customers Unhappy with The Competition and Encourage Switching to You

Non Synthetix Client

Conclusion

What is Knowledge Management?

How Does A Knowledge Base Work?

For Your Teams

For Your Customers

Why Use a Knowledge Base?

Benefits of Using A Knowledge Base for Teams

<img decoding="async" class="processes-icon" src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/kb_fcr-icon.svg">Improved First Contact Resolution (FCR)

<img decoding="async" class="processes-icon" src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/kb_aht-icon.svg">Reduced Average Handling Times (AHT) And Support Costs

<img decoding="async" class="processes-icon" src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/kb_training-times-icon.svg">Reduced Training and Onboarding Times

<img decoding="async" class="processes-icon" src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/kb_accuracy-knowledge-icon.svg">Consistency and Accuracy of Information

Benefits of Using Self-Service for Customers

<img decoding="async" class="processes-icon" src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/kb_csat-icon.svg">Customer Satisfaction

<img decoding="async" class="processes-icon" src="/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/kb_cx-icon.svg">Enhanced CX

Customer Experience – Seeing ‘clearly’ in 2020

Plan for the worst-case scenario

Plan to be flexible

Be integrated

Enhance resources

Be pro-active

Measure and control

Prioritise

Training

Synthetix have the complete platform of customer service tools.
Book a demo of any of our products below

Improved First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Reduced Average Handling Times (AHT) And Support Costs

Reduced Training and Onboarding Times

Consistency and Accuracy of Information

Customer Satisfaction

Enhanced CX